/diy/ - Do It Yourself

Here's a photo of the manufactured aligner

>>960584
Eh, I didn't think to timestamp the original photo, and I took the second one literally five minutes ago. ah well.

I'm back, with new pictures! For those of you who haven't been watching these threads, I'm making orthodontic aligners ("invisalign-style") at home with 3d scanning, printing, and vacuum forming.

This is the first retainer. It's actually "aligner 0". It fits my current mouth position. It fits!!!! This is a breakthrough success.

It took two tries to get the vacuum forming working correctly. The vacuum machine is good, but the plastic cools too much before the vacuum is applied. So, I used a heat gun to apply a little heat to the positive while the vacuum pump was on.

Pic related, it's the aligner. As I mentioned, it fits. It's a VERY good fit, it's actually kinda challenging to get it off because it conforms to my teeth so closely. Striations from the 3d printing are visible if you look closely, but invisible from afar. It really is quite invisible. It's hard to tell I'm wearing it unless you look closely, where you'd notice my teeth are too shiny.

I used a rotary tool to buff down the edges so they don't irritate my gums.

I'll be printing the rest of the aligner positives soon. The current plan is to change aligners every two weeks.

I'm going to take a new scan of my teeth once I'm three aligners into the process, to update the computer model.